Definition
A writ of old English law directing a sheriff or steward of a county court or hundred court to receive and admit an attorney to appear on behalf of a person who owed suit of court — that is, a person obligated by tenure or custom to attend and participate in a particular local court. The writ effectively compelled the court officer to accept a substitute appearance in place of the obligated party's personal attendance.
The name translates roughly as "for making or receiving an attorney," which describes the writ's dual function: securing the appointment of an attorney to act and ensuring that appointment was formally received and recognized by the court.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a purely archival term. No researcher will encounter it in modern practice or modern legal sources. Its significance is entirely historical and contextual.
Researchers working in medieval and early modern English legal records may encounter this writ in connection with suit of court obligations — the feudal duty of tenants to attend manorial, hundred, or county courts. The writ addresses a narrow procedural problem: when a party owed suit of court but could not or did not wish to appear personally, this writ secured their right to send a representative and forced the court officer to accept that representative.
The term matters for two research purposes. First, it illuminates the early history of attorney representation in English courts. The existence of a formal writ compelling acceptance of an attorney signals that resistance to attorney appearances was a real procedural obstacle, not merely a theoretical one — court stewards could and apparently did refuse to admit attorneys without compulsion. Second, the writ connects to the broader history of suit of court, a tenure obligation that generated substantial litigation and commentary in the Year Books and in Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium.
Researchers using Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium — the primary source cited in the Black's entry — should note that the work organizes writs by practical function rather than alphabetically, so locating discussion of this writ requires familiarity with Fitzherbert's structure. The citation to folio 156 provides a precise entry point.
No modern American legal relevance attaches to this term. It should not be analogized to modern attorney appointment procedures, which rest on entirely different legal foundations.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the only dictionary treatment in the Law Mind corpus. The entry is brief but accurate: it identifies the writ as obsolete, correctly locates it in old English law, describes its operative command (directed to sheriff or steward of county or hundred court), and identifies its purpose (compelling acceptance of an attorney for a party owing suit of court). The citation to Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium at folio 156 is the expected primary authority for this class of writ.
No other historical dictionaries in the corpus address this term. The absence is unsurprising — by the time most legal dictionaries were compiled, suit of court obligations had largely disappeared from English law, and the procedural writs associated with them had become purely antiquarian curiosities. Researchers needing fuller treatment should go directly to Fitzherbert, and secondarily to treatments of suit of court in older editions of Coke's Institutes and in histories of the English local court system.
Jurisdictional Note
This writ belongs exclusively to medieval and early modern English law. It has no counterpart, successor, or analog in American law. Researchers encountering the term in American sources are almost certainly reading historical commentary on English legal origins.